It was a tough weekend of battling the weather to try and find some racing action and that included Sunday night, August 27th. To find three nights of racing, it required visiting three different states(I could have headed to Canada on Saturday but opted instead of southern Minnesota) with eastern Wisconsin and Iowa also in the mix.
On Sunday all the local tracks were still getting rained on, but some searching around found the sun shining in northern Iowa so I took off for Mason City Motor Speedway for their Season Championship night. Now, I knew that the feature races would be started straight up but what I didn't know was that it was a "features only" night of racing with no qualifying heats in any of the classes. I guess this must be an "Iowa Thing." as I have never heard of this before. One time before I accidentally ran into this same format at Vinton Iowa but that was the only other time.
Some tracks at home on championship night start the heat races straight up but still make the drivers qualify for the feature based on their heat race finishes. That's as close as I have come to the "features only" format. Now that I think about it, I might have also experienced this once before at Osky also, but again in Iowa.
Sixty seven cars signed in to race in the five USRA classes that race on a weekly basis at Mason City. Among those was Blooming Prairie Minnesota's Doug Hillson. Here it is the last week in August and this is the first time that I have seen Hillson racing this year. However, he told me that he just hasn't been racing much this year as he has had lots of other things going on to fill his weekends and he lacks sponsors and pit crew help compared to years past. Noteworthy however is the fact that this is the fortieth year of racing for Hillson. And on Sunday I wouldn't get to see him race many laps either for a couple of reasons.
Hot laps proved costly as both Dave Kuykendall and Alex Yohn blew motors and were sidelined for the main events. With extra time on their hands, track officials made a special "deal" out of each of the five features with driver introductions, season trophies and pictures and interviews following each main event.
I should have known that weather would still be a factor on Sunday even though earlier in the day the sun shown and it was a nice afternoon. However, thunderstorms brewed to the North and just missed the track before things seemingly cleared up once again.
We weren't done yet though, as a second line quickly cooked up and seemed to be heading directly toward the track. Perhaps a little too much "raz ma taz" earlier ate up too much time and when the order was given to skip the Modified introductions and quickly start the race, it was a battle against time.
Jason Cummings is locked in a tight battle for the USRA National points title and every race is important for him. J.D. Auringer was the early leader of the Modified feature with Cummins quickly moving into second. Several times, as the sprinkles fell and the lightning cracked around the track, Cummins would dive to the inside of J.D. but he couldn't make the pass. Finally, Cummins pulled up beside Auringer down the back chute and Jason made a deep drive into turn three. However, he seemed to catch a rut which threw him up the track and forced Auringer over the cushion with Cummins taking over the lead.
One lap later a car slowed on the front chute and the yellow flew and with the race half over and the sprinkles continuing to fall, the race was quickly called complete. Auringer was not at all pleased and "dive bombed" Cummins a couple times as the field scrambled to the pits to load up. It was an unsatisfying way to end up the night and I'm sure that even Cummins wasn't pleased with the way things finished up. However, once it started raining there was no way that the track could be restored to racing form.
Of the five point champions who started on the pole, only two went on to win the final feature races. They were Brandon Hare in the B Mods and Luke Sathoff in the Stock Cars. Other winners included Kyle Balik in the Tuners and Andrew Borchardt in the Hobby Stocks.
To my surprise, the crowd was a very good one for the final race of 2017 at MCMS. Obviously most of them knew what they were going to see and it didn't seem to bother them and there seemed to be a high percentage of fans that were directly associated with one or more of the racers, again a good thing.
Co-promoter Al Hejna spoke to the crowd briefly and declared that 2017 was more successful than 2016 was and hinted that there would be some changes for next year but he didn't elaborate. It would seem that racing in Mason City finished up strong this year.
No comments:
Post a Comment